Giulia Camedda Graphic Design IPCA
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ACANOR
UVPLAST
MBA
ACANOR
ACANOR is a Portuguese multidisciplinary company wich offers to its clients services and decoration for the graphic print. It works especially with large size . The company has different machine that permit it to assist the client during the prepress, the print, the finishing and about the logistics. During our first visit we saw how the digital print works especially applyed to advertising job, a lot of the ACANOR's clients are important companies from different sectors. Our accompanist showed us some their works during the years and explained us how it's important pay attention to details for excellent printing results, like the case of the rich black. They are able to print on different supports such as paper, pvc, tissues.
ACANOR
We visited all the company and the accompainist explained us all the functions of their print machines. We followed the diffrent phases from the post print until the preparation to the shipment of one advertisment job. After the printing of the elements using the large size format, we saw how the digital cutter works following and recognising the shape of the works thanks to embedded software. After that the products were place in the logistic sector, ready to be send to their clients and inside the stores. In the preparation for the shipment, so in logistic, it's essential the works of employees that have to prepare the wares in diffrent stock to send in the diffrent part of the world.
ACANOR
ACANOR
In the last part of our visit at ACANOR we saw some employeeds using the transfer thermic machine that is used to print on plastic or paper films or also tissues.
UVPLAST
UVPLAST is a company specialized in varnishing UV and plasticization. It has a lot of machines that use PP (polypropylene) and PE (polyetylene), but also plastic film with different pattern, like holographic. At first we saw a lot of their interesting works for magazines, posters, flyers, packaging and so on.
uvplast
Then, during all the visit, we saw a lot of big machine working to plasticize different jobs, expecially advertising and packaging. There company is divided into a different areas depending on the several activities to be performed.
UVPLAST
Afterwards we went in a small area where we saw all the type of plastic that they have: different colors, different pattern and different dimension, to satisfy the needs of the client.
uvplast
In the last part of the visit we saw one of the employees using something similar to the silk printing process. First, he took a slab where he positioned a plastic film with some drawings (he prepared it before that process using two different machines) and then he put a blue color and spreaded it for all the slab, trying to not cover the drawings. After that he took the slab and put it inside a machine.He waited for some minutes and then he took off the slab, trying to cleaning it in the best way possible in a specific small room with some hydrans.
MBA
MBA is a very big company with a lot of special sectors dedicated for each type of printing. First of all one of the employees showed us the big "open space" where they work. We saw lot of employees working with different machine. In the first sector we saw the pad printing applied to pen. This printing process is similar to the silk screen but is generally used to print on objects with irregular surfaces, in hight-quality. The ink is not exposed to air but is inside an ermetic container called "glass". On the clichĂŠ is engraved the image to print and the clichĂŠ is mounted on the pad printing machine. The pad, in silicon rubber, is pressed against the cliche and "collects" ink "shaped".The pad is moved on the object to be printed and is pressed against it to fit into the surface. When it's removed from the object it released the ink on the surface of it.
MBA
In this part of our visit we saw how the screen printing process work. The key-point of this process is prepare the matrix. There is a frame in, on a canavas, wich is covered with a gel photosensitive. On is there is the drawing that you want to do.
Once the canavas exposed to light with gel. The drawing, on transparent film (polyester), leaves embossed the black parts, and in this way is possible have the matrix of the silk-screen printing. Then, with a roll or brush, is possible spread the color.
MBA
We saw how the screen printing transfer works. The drawing to impress on the object (like t-shirt, bags, hats or other tissues objects) is on a special paper, form screen printing process or other printing process. The transfer machine has two plates: one on the bottom and one on the top; the bottom one is the place where put the object and the top one is that one, wich must be hot during the printing, that the employess press for some seconds to imprint the drawing on the object. This process is very fast and in a short time is possible get many prints. There is a similar way to print, that is digital and it's called digital transfer, but is appropriated to print a small number of elements.
MBA
In the rest of the company there are a lot of others sector that use also the handmade of the employees, for exemple to prepare some special packaging or paper games. A small section is dedicated to the photography an another one to the laser cutting.
The employees are divided by tasks for all the company. At the end of our visit we went inside a small room where they prepare some stickers plasticized from different dimension and for different brands. Then we saw the last printed object and the last work realized.